Byron E. Shafer

Primary Rules, Political Power, and Social Change *

This paper examines the relationship between the kinds of delegate allocation rules used in Democratic presidential primaries (Winner-Take-All, Districted, and Proportional) and the power of various states within the national Democratic party. It demonstrates that these rules are often, in the short run, more important than a states voters in determining the fate of particular candidates. It shows, in the middle run, that different types of states are clearly favored by different sets of primary regulations. It closes with some speculation about the long-run impact of these tendencies.

The Transformation of Southern Politics Revisited: The House of Representatives as a Window

The appearance of a Republican majority among Southern members of the US House of Representatives provides a substantive reason to reconsider political change in the post-war South. And a newly created, merged dataset makes it possible to address the central and recurrent propositions about change in Southern politics in a manner not previously possible. When this is done, four basic contributions are highlighted, each a clear modification of the standard story. The main impetus for partisan change proves to be economic development, and a changing politics of economic interest. The main brake on this impetus proves to be legal desegregation, and a changing politics of racial identity. Several indirect interactions of race and class then enhance the impact of both contributions, while their joint impact is also powerfully shaped by the strategic response of partisan elites: by the appearance of Republican challengers but, especially, by the practical resistance of Democratic incumbents.

The New Cultural Politics

American political history can-indeed it must-be separated into eras according to the grand issue around which politics revolved. Needless to say, there have been few such issues, able to mark off an entire political era. Constitutionalism and governmental structure at the beginning of an independent American history, regionalism and geographic development during much of the nineteenth century, social class and economic welfare during much of the twentieth-this would probably exhaust the list. Now, there is a fourth grand issue. Now, as a result, there is a new political era as well. This underlying concern is not widely identified, much less celebrated. Yet it has been the energizing force in national party politics for some time. And it will shape the subsequent course of that politics, glacially and ineluctably, for many years to come. The Great Cultural Divide

Republicans and Democrats as Social Types: Or, Notes toward an Ethnography of the Political Parties

When you shake his hand, do you already know? Before you ask whether she has done anything political, can you guess in which party she would have done it? The political parties, even American political parties, are different. They offer different issue positions, on economic policy, on foreign policy, on social policy. They represent different interests as well, different classes, different regions, different ethnic and racial groups. Yet there is something else about these parties, something quite apart from issues and interests, which makes the direct observer believe that he can tell the Republicans from the Democrats, even when he is at the country club, or at the corner bar.

The Election of 1988 and the Structure of American Politics: Thoughts on Interpreting an Electoral Order

Abstract The American elections of 1988, dismissed as uneventful on their face, reveal an underlying electoral pattern, which has been in existence for more than a generation. Examples from the current campaign, along with broader historical developments, suggest that this pattern is the product of an institutionalized ‘electoral order’ — combining issue divisions, social cleavages, and governmental reinforcement in order to produce recurring election outcomes. Tactical adjustments by individual candidates are comparatively inconsequential when confronted by this continuing structure, but other sources of possible, further evolution do exist.

The Nomination and the Election: Clearing Away Underbrush

The politics of presidential selection in 2008 reinvigorated an old argument from democratic theory about the relationship between nominating politics and the general election. Now that the latter is over, it is possible to return to these debates and ask how candidate fortunes at the nominating stage were linked to performances in November. For 2008, the strongest of these relationships proved to be perverse, with nominees performing best in states that they would cede to their opponent in the general election. Other relationships, however, as with improving or impairing results in individual states, achieved a more straightforward character, especially when institutional structure and temporal order were taken into account.

The Evolution of Mass Ideologies in Modern American Politics

Abstract A newly created dataset makes it possible to go looking for the mass ideologies most common in American politics across the postwar years. For this purpose, it is necessary to distinguish five great ideological groups: Liberals, Conservatives, Populists, Libertarians, and Moderates. These prove to have distinct voting behaviors, not just in the ballot for President but also in the propensity and manner by which they split their tickets. They have distinct perceptions of the main organizational referents in politics, both political parties and organized interests, while the distinction between objectively measured versus self-identified ideologies proves to be consequential as well. Finally, these ideological groups do not just evolve differently across the postwar years; they alter the substantive content of major-party coalitions at both the rank-and-file and the activist levels while doing so.

The Catholics and the Others: The Denominational Backdrop to Modern American Politics

Abstract This paper goes in search of the contribution of the five major religious families in American society to the ideological landscape for electoral conflict. Taking advantage of new methodological opportunities and a rich but underutilized dataset, it considers the distribution of political values within denominations, the link between these values and voting behavior, and the strategic landscape – plus strategic dilemmas – that results from that link. By considering these across the most recent quarter-century, it isolates an older world sometimes characterized as “the Protestant nation,” where Catholics offered additionally distinctive political behavior, and a new world in which the great denominations behave very differently, but where changes in Catholic behavior are arguably most critical to this change.

Where Are We in History? 2010 in the Longest Run

One classic way to get perspective on the most recent election is to drop it into the full sweep of congressional elections across all of American history. A focus on partisan control of the House, on partisan control of national government, and on the difference in these between mid-term and presidential years provides a way to isolate elements of distinction for the mid-term of 2010. While this hardly provides a means of foretelling the future, it does suggest some key structural elements that help distinguish the most recent elections from even their immediate predecessors.

Dealignment Affirmed or Explosion Deferred?: The American Mid-term Elections of 1986

Within days. there was an orthodox wisdom on the American mid-term elections of 1986. At one level, they were a collection of individual races, lacking common themes from above and common responses from below, in which the best candidate-determined somewhat circularly-won. At a second level, while great new issues or grand social forces were not effectively present, there was still an available larger generalization: the alleged partisan realignment of the post-New Deal era in American politics, whose realization (or not) had itself become a staple of partisan debate, was not discernible in final election results. It was not conclusively dismissed. It surely was not advanced, and it was clearly somewhat retarded by the final mosaic of individual election outcomes. Nicol Rae has very ably set out this view, with a sophistication rare to post-election analyses, and with subtle elaborations and elucidations all his own. History is likely to make him right. Further concrete embodiments of the alleged theoretical elements of a classic and continuing partisan ‘dealignment’ were evident and abundant in the aftermath of the 1986 elections.’ Different parties advanced at different levels, simultaneously; the same voters went different ways with different elective offices, in apparent disregard of their (apparent) partisan loyalties. Nevertheless, it is still history, in the form of the results of the next several American elections, which will ultimately make the post-mortems of 1986 either right or wrong. Which is to say, those central elements which are most consistent with an evolving dealignment were themselves only capable of isolation after the ballot in 1986. The place of the 1986 elections, in turn, when viewed as one single, composite event, must inevitably be determined by the elections to follow. Even the two larger trends in American politics which were confirmed and expanded by these election outcomes, trends touched upon but under-emphasized in post-election accounts. can still in principle remain consistent with two grand, and ttlree specific. alternative historical movements.